NASA Sky-Mapping Spacecraft Spots First New Asteroid

By SPACE.com Staff |
January 25, 2010 12:49pm ET

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The red dot at the center of this image is the first near-Earth asteroid discovered by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The asteroid appears redder than the rest of the background stars because it is cooler and emits most of its light at longer infrared wavelengths. In visible light, this space rock is very faint and difficult to see.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NASA's latest sky-mapping space telescope has found an
asteroid never-before-seen from Earth, the first of hundreds of new objects the
telescope is expected to find.

The newfound asteroid is currently about 98 million miles
(158 million km) from Earth and has an estimated diameter of 0.6 miles (1 km).

The rock comes as close to the sun as Earth does, but
because it circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted with respect to the
Earth's orbital plane, the asteroid isn't thought to come near enough to our
planet to pose a hazard. Scientists will monitor the asteroid though to make
sure it doesn't pose an impact threat.

The WISE mission's software was able to pick out the
object moving against a background of stationary stars. Researchers confirmed
the object's identity with the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter visible-light
telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea.

WISE is expected to find about 100 to 1,000 previously
undiscovered asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, as well as hundreds
of new near-Earth asteroids during its all-sky survey, which began on Jan. 14.

A new
report issued last week found that NASA's efforts at finding
near-Earth asteroids that could potentially pose a threat to Earth are not
sufficient.

NASA's asteroid and near-Earth object experts have said
that the agency has found about 85 percent of the largest nearby asteroids,
ones that are a half-mile (1 km) wide or larger. But only 15 percent of the
460-foot wide asteroids near Earth have been discovered and tracked to date,
and just 5 percent of nearby space rocks about 164 feet (50 meters) across have
been found.

WISE will also spot millions of new stars and galaxies as
it scans the sky in the infrared
wavelengths every 11 seconds as it orbits the Earth. The
spacecraft launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in December
2009.